Prison Labour, Union Wages, and the Modern Slavery Australia Refuses to See

The events unfolding inside South Australia’s prisons right now demand attention, and honesty. For three consecutive days, prisons across the state have been in rolling lockdowns due to strike action by members of the Public Service Association (PSA). Staff have walked off the job, leaving prisons severely understaffed. In their absence, prisoners have been held in their cells for 24 hours at a time: no phone calls, no visits, no court appearances, no access to their lawyers, and for some, meals reduced to pieces of fruit.

Inside, people are reporting that prisoners themselves have been made to take on the labour required to keep the prisons functioning: cleaning, distributing food, maintaining basic operations. The system cannot run without prisoner labour. It never has.

“Lowest Paid Workers”? Let’s Talk About the People Paid Six Dollars a Day

The PSA claims correctional officers are underpaid and undervalued. But there is an entire workforce inside the prisons that earns as little as six or seven dollars a day – not an hour, a day – to manufacture furniture, prepare meals, pack products, sew uniforms, run laundries, maintain grounds, and keep prison industries operating.

These workers generate real economic value every single day. But they are not legally recognised as workers. They have no industrial protections, no bargaining power, no injury rights, no sick leave, no holidays, no superannuation, and no ability to refuse unsafe work.

If the PSA wants to talk about exploitation, let’s talk about exploitation.

Six dollars a day is not just low pay.
It is forced labour.
It is modern slavery.

And it is the foundation upon which the entire prison system rests.

What Prison Labour Actually Looks Like

When the PSA describes its members working in “dangerous conditions,” I think about the conditions under which I worked as a prisoner.

I worked in stores packing prisoner buys, hauling heavy boxes across factory floors, stacking shelves for hours without ergonomic support. I worked through strip searches, through humiliation, through surveillance, under the threat of punishment for refusing a shift or working “too slowly.”

There was no occupational health and safety.
No protective equipment.
No training.
No capacity to say no.

I had no union.
No representation.
No ability to collectively bargain or collectively withdraw my labour.

And while I worked, the officers who now say they are “the lowest paid workers in the system” were being represented at coronial inquests by unions working to suppress footage of them harming or killing prisoners.

This is not two sides of the same labour story.
One group is underpaid.
The other is unpaid, coerced, and disposable.

The Union Narrative Falls Apart Under Scrutiny

If the PSA wants to talk about “dangerous environments,” “low pay,” and “lack of respect,” it cannot ignore the people whose labour props up the very institutions their members work in.

The PSA argues that officers are being pushed to the brink, that violence in prisons is rising, and that working conditions are deteriorating. All of that may be true.
But it is also true that prisoners live and work under even worse conditions, conditions the union has never campaigned to improve.

The union fights for the people holding the keys.
Not for the people doing the labour that keeps the institution functional.
Not for the people earning six dollars a day.
Not for the people punished if they refuse.

It is politically convenient for the PSA to portray its members as victims of institutional neglect, but the reality is that the institution would collapse without the exploitation of a captive workforce.

A Legal System Designed to Maintain Forced Labour

None of this is accidental. The law is built to enable it.

Modern slavery laws contain explicit exemptions for prison labour.
Labour laws exclude prisoners entirely.
Human rights legislation evaporates once you pass through the prison gates.

If this labour occurred in a factory offshore, Australia would condemn it as exploitation and demand sanctions. But behind prison walls, forced labour is repackaged as “routine industry practice” or “rehabilitation.”

The truth is simple: prison labour is not rehabilitation; it is economic extraction enforced through punishment.

The Strike Has Made the Invisible Visible

These lockdowns have revealed what the government and union rarely admit:
prisons cannot operate without the coerced labour of prisoners.

The moment staff walked off, the institution turned to the people who are paid the least, valued the least, and harmed the most, and expected them to perform the labour necessary to keep the system afloat.

Unpaid.
Unacknowledged.
Unprotected.

This is modern slavery happening in real time.

Where to From Here?

If Australia is serious about addressing labour exploitation, it must confront the exploitation happening inside its own prisons.

If unions want to speak about low wages and unsafe work, they must reckon with the captive workforce whose exploitation underpins the very industry keeping their members employed.

If the public wants to talk about fairness, safety, and justice, those words must extend to the people whose labour is invisible by design.

Abolition is not simply about closing prisons.
It is about refusing to accept a system built on coercion, punishment, and economic exploitation of the most powerless workforce in the country.

Until we dismantle the structures that rely on forced labour, Australia will continue to profit from a form of modern slavery that hides behind uniforms, wages campaigns, and six-dollar-a-day “jobs.”